Sudanese killed as they flee Darfur: activists

STORY: Thousands have been trying to flee El Geneina in Sudan's western Darfur.

Increasingly they are shot and killed, before they can reach safety.

That's according to Mohammed Hassan, executive director of the Darfur Network for Human Rights.

"The civilians, the citizens, for more than two months, are not allowed to go out, women go out, they rape and kill them. Men go out of the city, they kill them."

War that erupted in Sudan in April has reignited violence in the long-volatile Darfur region.

El Geneina has been described by the head of one NGO as a "city of death", and "probably the worst part of Sudan".

The violence there has been driven by militias from Arab nomadic tribes, along with members of the Rapid Support Forces.

It is the paramilitary faction battling Sudan's army for power, predominantly in the capital Khartoum.

The RSF was formed out of the feared "Janjaweed" - Arab militias that help the government crush a rebellion by manly non-Arab groups in Darfur two decades ago.

There are warning signs that the atrocities of that period could be repeated.

Medical charity MSF said on Monday (June 19) that some 15,000 people had fled western Darfur over the previous four days.

Many arrivals, it said, reported seeing people shot and killed as they tried to escape.

MSF also reported rapes.

"One of the worst things now is that the bodies of the targeted were not removed, still now outside the roads, inside houses. There is a humanitarian crisis, still people (suffer from) lack of food, lack of medicine, lack of treatment and lack of water."

RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo said on Tuesday that his force would investigate events in El Geneina.

He accused the army of fomenting violence by armed tribes.

The army blamed the RSF for the death of West Darfur's governor last week and other violence in the region.